Jon Stewart paid a visit to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly to debate Fox News' hip hop double standard.
Ari Melber"I’m like a shot a Levittown right in your ass, like a B-12—boom!"
Those were Jon Stewart’s last words to Bill O’Reilly in his guest appearance on Monday night’s "O’Reilly Factor," in a virtuoso duel where comedy eviscerated farce.
The two highly rated cable stars squared off over one of the more inane controversies in a political season full of inane controversies—whether the White House was wrong to invite the socially conscious rapper Common to perform at a poetry slam. If you haven’t heard:
Basically, (some) conservatives said Common’s music was vile because he questioned murder convictions and police authority. Also, he has been seen R.W.B—rapping while black. Then, Liberals (and fact-checkers) retorted that Common is a conscious and even cuddly musician, with credentials that include recording a pro-life duet with Lauryn Hill and starring in Tina Fey’s last movie. Plus, GOP administrations have hosted edgier musicians who have also questioned murder convictions and police authority.
So when O’Reilly doubled down on his hypocritical case and challenged Stewart to come debate the nontroversy, it was a no-brainer.
In two short segments, O’Reilly walked through his case, responded to factual charges of hypocrisy with some fairly sad parsing and then, when desperate, with rank "pettifogging," to use a term bandied by both men. Meanwhile, the "Daily Show" anchor’s rebuttals were striking because, even in this casual mode on a minor item, he was more persuasive than the vast majority of people who are called on to represent a progressive view on TV.
Stewart really seized control of the terms of debate near the end of the first segment, when he asked whether O’Reilly would revoke Bono’s White House guest pass, issued by several administrations, because of his song about Leonard Peltier. "It’s the exact same thing: A guy convicted of killing a law enforcement official, no?" asked Stewart, adding "Boo-yah!" to emphasize the point. (He salted his rhetoric with rap slang throughout the debate.) And that’s when O’Reilly started to melt. "Did Bono, did he actually come out and say that [Peltier] was innocent?" O’Reilly asked, groping for a distinction. "No, I think he was raising questions about it," O’Reilly offered. "Now who’s pettifogging?," Stewart countered, "I can’t even see you, through your pettifog!"
Stewart closed with a critique that is familiar to Fox’s critics, but may be worthwhile for O’Reilly’s audience to hear directly, noting that Fox operates a "selective outrage machine" that kicks into gear "only when it suits the narrative that suits them."
Both interview segments are below:
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.